Sunday, August 30, 2009

August inventory charts

The narrative has lately been that the housing market has bottomed because inventory is down. That sure isn't true in most of our Westside!

For example, Santa Monica (above), although down 12% from July, is up 18% from August 2008. Pacific Palisades up a whopping 121% from August 2008. Only Palms-Mar Vista is down, 19%. The overall Westside is up 10% from August 2008.

12 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Yep, Mar Vista is a much better buy than any other Westside area right now, in relative dollars (not just absolute, where Mar Vista was always cheapest). Mar Vista started correcting for the bubble about a year sooner than Santa Monica, for instance, so they're a year ahead in the curve and also being helped by the $729k conforming jumbo limit.

The rest of the Westside have neither advantage going for them; they're still priced at bubble prices and the financing is tougher than ever for over $1 million.

So someone buying today would have much more value retained in Mar Vista than in Santa Monica or PP, where they're just starting their long ride down in value.

MB Confidential has died down too. On here the problem is with the postings about stats like the expired/withdrawn and inventory charts. They are interesting and I check them when posted, but they rarely move in any way that inspires conversation. Postings about specific homes and local issues are what brings the folks out.

I hereby propose that every single house between 15th and 26th and Wilshire and San Vicente that has an open house be discussed here.

I agree, but smell a Franklin district bias - open the discussion area up to all 90403 and 90402 SFR's. The Franklin myth has to come to a close - every SM primary school is good. Seriously, natives and longtimers who actually went to the schools, and sent their kids there as well, don't buy the hype. 'GRS' and 'Franklin' were great promo buzz words to relocating outsiders during the bubble, but in the end the features don't mean squat. I feel sorry for the folks who thought they were getting a more exclusive 90402/90403 and paid the extra $$$'s.

The reason the discussion has gotten boring is that during the Bubble frenzy, bubble blogs like this one and SM Distress etc were a refuge to discuss the coming bust with others who saw the handwriting on the wall. Now, even the biggest douche knows that it was all a bubble and that prices are going down hard. So there's less to argue about.

I do think it's interesting how a big gap has formed between the lower-end of housing, which went down 50% in price and is close to bottom, and the higher-end of housing like Santa Monica, which has gone down some 20% but is still 20% to 30% away from its bottom. Even that's not very debatable though, you only need to look at how inventory is going down in the low-end and yet it's staying at all-time-highs in the high end, and that's the end of the argument.

So now it's just a boring waiting game, waiting for banks to unload their REOs, to repo from the deadbeat bubble buyers, to wait for the Bitter Buyers setting new low comps with short sales. People like me with average (for west la) $300+ incomes can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel, but we also know we have to wait another year or two until all the deadbeat buyers are shaken out and prices in the high-end bottom out. Frankly I don't even look on the MLS, it's useless since we're still a ways from the bottom. If I were looking in Burbank, say, or Sherman Oaks, there at least it might be time to think about buying.